We doubt many Ohioans would disagree that teachers should be evaluated regularly on their effectiveness in the classroom. The devil is in the decisions that have to be made from that point on.

Fortunately, state legislators did a couple of smart things in crafting the law that spells out the new formula for teacher evaluations. They built some welcome flexibility into the law. And they left it to local districts to decide how to use the evaluation results.

It’s hard to remember a time when public education wasn’t in flux in Ohio, but some particularly big transitions are occurring in classrooms right now. Districts are aligning their teaching materials with the higher standards required under the Common Core, and teachers are grappling with the mandate to hold back many of the third-graders who cannot pass that grade level’s reading test.

As standards and measurements of results change, it’s imperative that teachers have time to adjust. That flexibility needs to be reflected in the evaluation process. The new law, for example, requires evaluations less often for the highest-rated teachers.

The law also does not mandate that administrators and school boards follow a particular course of action in the case of poor evaluations. Though this should not be taken as license to ignore problems, it keeps the decision making local, as it should be on such a critical issue.

As a Rep story Sunday noted, the new evaluation process already is paying dividends. Administrators have a list of skills against which to measure their teachers, and administrators and teachers are finding more opportunities to “work together and make the teachers better,” as one teacher put it.